


Questions

by duderank



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-12 01:43:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duderank/pseuds/duderank





	Questions

"Sometimes it feels like every couple of weeks, for as long as I can remember, I've had to kill somebody." 

Thus spoke Leroy Jethro Gibbs to his audience of one. Lt Commander Melanie Burke, Chaplain at the Naval yard.

"They all mount up. Most I can deal with,for one reason or another, but then there are the others."

"Others?" Melanie asked.

"There aren't that many, but they're the ones who never go away. That keep me awake at night. The ones that hurt when ever I think about them too much."

Melanie leaned in closer. "Would you like to talk about one of them? How about the most recent"

Gibbs was hesitant.

"Come on Jethro, I've waited a long time for this opportunity. Don't back out on me now. Please, talk to me."

After a few long seconds Gibbs began to speak.

"A while back, I had to kill a young woman. A colleague. Didn't like her all that much,liked what she did even less but, I didn't want to have to kill her." 

He'd closed his eyes screwing them up as if in pain. He opened them again to focus on Melanies' face before elaborating.

"She was made to do some terrible things, like kill a friend of mine. All for family. All crimes she was willing to pay for. The hard way as it turned out."

He paused to take a breath, then went on.

"Although I knew I wouldn't have done her no favours not pulling the trigger, despite everything, It still pains me to think back to that night. About the brave little girl who lost the closest thing she had to a mother."

Having finished Gibbs fell quiet. It appeared to Melanie that his pouring his heart out was tiring him.

"I think I know who you might be talking about. A case of do what you have to do for family taken to extremes?"

Gibbs was impressed. She knew of his many rules.

"The only one of mine she ever followed, but the wrong way and so, I had to kill her."

His clear regret at the incident was plain for Melanie to see.

"And how far would you have taken it, Jethro?" she asked.

"It's funny, but she pretty much asked me a question a lot like that the day she died." 

"What question?"

"Would I have done the same had it been Kellys' life on the line? I couldn't answer. Not truthfuly."

"Why not?" Melanie asked, strangely fearful of what the answer might be.

"I didn't want her to know that a part of me wanted to say yes. That duty and country wouldn't have meant anything to me either once, next to the life of my little girl." 

Melanie, slowly, took in what he had said.

"I had you down for doing the right thing, always." 

It seemed to Gibbs that Melanie had been disappointed with his reply. What he said next left him in no doubt that she was.

"It only goes to show you can't be sure of anybody." 

"I thought I could be sure about you." 

She looked him in the eye and asked, "What would you do were you to ever meet the person who killed Hernandez?"

There it was. The $64,000 question. How to answer?

He thought about Lee and himself. how both of them had killed outside of the law for loved ones. 

True, she'd killed two innocent men and he had put down a guilty one, but the principle was still the same and he knew that. It was why he had lost so much sleep over the girl. More than for any he had ever consigned to the afterlife, before or since.

She'd always known she'd be caught sooner rather than later and, when she had been, she was practically resigned to her fate. He could still recall the look of resigned acceptance in her dying eyes at the finish.

With help, he had buried what he'd done for over 20 years and hoped no one would find out. Which was worse?

Was today the day to let some one new in on his darkest secret?

He made his choice not to burden Melanie with the truth. At least, not yet.

"What would I do? buy 'em a drink."


End file.
